It is an open Elo league in which players organize their own games and play as many or as few as they like. This topic will be where I post updates about the league. Here are a few guidelines and links to resources.

How long does the League run?
It starts July24 and ends August 26.

If the top four finishers agree, I will organize a Top Four playoff at the conclusion of the League.

Can I still join?
Yes. Registration for The Bigboy Teaching League is open for sign up at any time.

How can I organize a game?
You can post an open game on Jinteki.net with the title: Teaching League Game. If someone joins, you should ask if they are signed up for the league because you cannot report results if they are not in the league.

Can I change decks between games?
Yes. Each player can select a new deck each time they play.

Where do I report results?
The winner of each game should report results to The Challenge Board. Make sure to get the Challenge Board ID of your opponent from them, as some people do not use the same ID on Jinteki and the Challenge Board.

Optional: If you want to help me in a data collection experiment, you can also report game results to this Google Form where I am trying to gather information about match ups during the league.

What if I have other questions?
Please direct them to me (@FightingWalloon) here or on Slack.

This is my first time participating in anything like this, so forgive the newb questions. If I understand correctly, this is basically a pick-up league – no real formal schedule or pairings, you just post on Slack or in Jinteki.net that you’re looking for a League game, and hopefully get something arranged, yes?

(Also, I’m still quite new to the Netrunner scene, so I’m not 100% sure how all the online tools interact: can Netrunnerdb and Jinteki.net talk to each other directly to share the teaching decks – like, can I link my accounts and sync my decks or anything similarly fancy and cool – or do I just need to export the decks in some kind of text format and copy them into Jinteki?)

You need to manually copy the decks into Jinteki. If you view the decks, there is an option to export it as a Jinteki format (which is basically just a list of cards). You can then create the deck using the deckbuilder in your Jinteki account.

As for setting up games, yes, just post in Slack that you are up for a game. You can also open a game on Jinteki labeled for the BBTL, but sometimes you will get people joining who are not aware what the league is or are not part of it.

Players in the league will be very happy to help you out with any issues you have using Jinteki or getting going. I hope you have fun.

It’s a pretty good sign that the most popular runner has the worst record. That means that even when people are losing they are still having fun! It’s only worrisome when a deck is doing poorly AND people don’t like it.

I think it’s clear that Kit is a good deck, even if she’s in a bit of a slump. 43% with this sample size frankly isn’t even that bad. 1 solid week of good games can pull her back

I’m a bit worried about Gabe.
Mostly because I find myself not wanting to play him.

I will say that I do feel comfortable with my Crim Aggro style of decks and thus, one of the reasons I have for playing in the League, getting better with certain styles, doesn’t pull me to him. One of the reasons I tend to avoid playing Crim Aggro in tournaments is that the inability of having a lategame, or the strong possibility of a Corp simply preventing me from having a chance to win, pushes me away from that style of deck. Similar is true here. Especially since you’re guaranteed that every deck you play against will have a way to prevent you from ever getting into the remote (doubled code gates with an outer non-code gate), the deck thus hinges on drawing your strong aggressive cards early (Siphon, Desperado) as well as getting Agenda points from random accesses early.

That style doesn’t sit well with me, even though I will bust it out every so often just for laughs and devil-may-care.

This also means I may not be very good at evaluating the deck’s strength, anyway.

I hear your concerns. I’m not well positioned to evaluate whether you are correct. Last league, I was fairly convinced PE was too strong based on its record in the league, but this time around it is much less dominating. Is that because it is not unbalanced or are their other factors?

I personally find Gabe interesting, but have played very little this league. I hope to find more time for league games, but even then I am not sure my personal experience will be a valid gauge of the deck’s inherent strength or weakness.

I do wonder whether these are still quite small samples to infer much from the actual results. For example, it would only take one or two new/inexperienced players who don’t play PE very well for example to lose a lot with it and skew the results. With a changing pool of players and matchups, I’m not sure the results can be used as any kind of concrete evidence of the strength or weakness of a deck. I know for a fact I’ve lost a bunch of games with PE this time round where I was quite successful with it last time and it’s largely due to me making mistakes rather than exclusively because Runners have adjusted to play against it better. Plus, in statistically insignificant samples, there’s always the variance factor which can easily destroy any conclusions which might otherwise have been drawn from the results.

I take your point, but to some extent this argument would preclude us judging any deck based on its results. Compared to the universe of possible games that could be played, every data set of actual results we have is pretty small.

Is it even proper to say a deck is strong or weak, as if that is a real property a deck can have? Does its strength exist separate from the results it has achieved in actual play? Or is deck “strength” a construct of social processes within the community of players?

Sure, I get where you’re coming from, but what I mean is that if we had like 5000 games played in the BBTL, we could draw more meaningful and trustworthy conclusions about the relative strength of each deck within that (limited) meta than we can with the very small sample we have. Therefore it’s potentially misleading to make statements or infer conclusions about the relative strength of these decks from such a small sample.

I’m not saying the results are irrelevant, just that they’re not necessarily indicative of the “true” strength of any given deck.

I believe we have a significant player selection skew in these results, as at least one of our most active and top players has favored particular IDs throughout the tournament. Or at least, that is what I think was the case. Nonetheless, here are the results.

PE has fallen off quite a bit from BBTL 2 and Kit continues her fall from pre-eminence. The new Gabe ID is the least played and appears to have held his own outside the GRNDL match up.

I’m sorry if that came across as a negative comment or a jab. It was not intended that way at all.

I was just trying to say that the strong showing for GRNDL (for instance) might have less to do with that deck being super strong than it has to do with the fact that a very good player was playing it consistently. I meant nothing negative toward you at all.

As I wrote on Slack, I’m really happy you are in the league and playing so much because it means other players can easily find games and opponents to play.

Please accept my apology. If I can make amends in some way, I’ll do so.